I agree.

Personally, I always liked the coloring on this story. Alex of course always found fault on most of his stories. And he was color blind, so go figure. There was another story in Witching Hour that was excellent and seemed to be forgotten. Hope we see that one too.

Comments:

The coloring is still miles ahead of the over-rendered, garish colors we see in todays comics. I like like what was done colorwise on page 3 with the subtley shadowed skin tones. Partial to page 4, as I own the original.

Hi Steve H: can you give an example of modern coloring you think is good, not rushed and that is well thought out? Just out of curiousity. Really, most comics coloring is horrible. I always thought DC in the seventies was about as good as it has gotten...not saying much, I know, but there it is.

Steve: I'll go along with Corben if you mean his pre-Den underground work,for the most part. Later he overdid it to somewhat repulsive results...well, the seventies were about excess. Steranko did some excellent work though I wish there was more. Neal Adams working with Jack Adler at DC in the 70s did some very good work. Moebius was the best for a while until he stopped doing his own color. I liked Lynn Varley on Ronin. More recently, Daniel Clowes is doing some nice coloring (Ice Haven and The Death Ray). Doggoned if I can think of many others, what a wasteland.

Yes, pre- Den for the most part, but he always seemed to have the true artist's take. How could I forget Moebius? Or much that was printed in Heavy Metal. And yes, Varley on Ronin was almost a renaissance. I guess I never really knew when Neal Adams was coloring.

I remember Steranko's Chandler as a sort of revelation in my memory, so much so that I can still see many of those panels in my head.

As much as the older coloring tends to turn me off, I still enjoy more simple takes on the rendering, but since my modern comic reading has slowed a lot, I'm not one to comment on much contemporary work.

The work on Adam Hughes' stuff is nice, but I don't know if he's coloring. I like Cho's work, but he can go too far at times too. Art Adams' stuff is nice too.

Dave Stewart's work on Hellboy works because he keeps things relatively simple.

It's amazing anything got done colorwise in the pre-digital era. Coloring was a tedious process and that would often negatively impact the creative process. The tools today make it relatively easy to control. That's why it's so disheartening to see so much horrible color these days. I saw a re-coloring of some old Conan and Red Sonja books recently, and I wanted to cry. Totally ruined some otherwise classic art...

Okay -- the latest page of the day (04/10/08) is one of my all-time favorites, but here's one with coloring that makes me crazy.

The first page is pretty nice, moody and rich with a good balance to Alex's blacks.

The second page continues on pretty well -- but the details really start to lack. With all the WW2 buffs at DC in this era, you'd think someone would have started helping out the colorists with things like uniforms, equipment, flags... that Nazi flag in panel 4 is so far from correct that it's ludicrous -- and would have been so dramatic against the scene in correct color.

Steve...I'll take your word for it about accuracy....look at it this way. They only pay the colorists a nickle a page. That's why you had guys like Steranko and Adams taking that nickle and the time to do it right themselves. No profit motive there, just making sure the work is as good as it possibly could be. Instead of bitching about it Toth should have done the color guides himself. I personally think it's worth it, because color is so damn important. So then imagine how Steranko felt after doing all that extra unpaid work on his masterpiece At the Stroke of Midnight and having Lee come and mess with a perfect story and ruin it with idiotic amendments, and you can see why we have had so few Steranko comics since, he just had had enough of dealing with morons. I wonder if Toth would have been allowed to do his own coloring at DC even if he had asked....I think so given Adams' experience...but like I said I think DC did their best for him in particular, accuracy aside his DC work at this time is the best coloring he ever got.

While I'm sure "a nickel a page" is probably an exaggeration, I don't doubt you that the colorists' pay wasn't the greatest -- too bad too, because it certainly was/is an important part of the equation.

Yeah, Lee would have pissed me off too... sort of like my clients do! ;-)